


still sleeping in your t-shirt

by labeledbones



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 21:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13199313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: I miss you.The text sits unanswered for minutes, and then hours, and then a day, and then another day, and another and another.--Just a little good ol' wintertime Armie/Timmy angst for you.





	still sleeping in your t-shirt

_I miss you._

The text sits unanswered for minutes, and then hours, and then a day, and then another day, and another and another. It stares at him every time he picks up his phone. He wants to take it back, un-send it, send a follow up: _just kidding LA can keep you_ and an assortment of meaningless emojis. But he just waits. 

He gets home late, nearly morning, walking the few blocks from the subway in the freezing cold, snow still coming down, sidewalks covered in a thin layer of gray slush. He feels the cold deep down in his bones, fumbles with the key in the lock because his fingers are numb as soon as they leave his pockets. He stands for a second in the foyer of his new apartment, still not unpacked, boxes lining the long hallway to the bedroom. He sheds all of his extra layers, drops them to the floor, leaves them in the entryway, feels his extremities come back to life, warm and tingling, electric almost. The feeling reminds him of something else, someone else, a mouth against his jaw, hands in his hair. 

_I miss you._

Sent Dec 12 12:46 AM. Four days. His chest hurts like he’s been holding his breath this whole time. He keeps holding it.

He undresses in his near empty bedroom, the apartment silent because he’s alone now, no roommates, no parents, just him and the mattress on the floor and his clothes in bags scattered around the room. He hadn’t thought to sort anything when he packed up his old room, just threw things wherever there was space. So now he’s tearing through every bag, looking for the shirt. That old threadbare shirt he’d borrowed from Armie one night when he’d stayed at the Hammer house without planning ahead. He’d kept it without saying anything and Armie had never asked for it back. 

He finds it shoved in a small old duffle bag, the fifth bag he goes through, clothes now strewn all over the floor. A plain faded blue t-shirt, a small hole just starting at the collar, a constellation of small bleach stains near the hem. He immediately brings the shirt to his face, buries his nose in it, searching. The smell is still there, though now it’s buried underneath the smell of his own stale laundry, but he finds it: Armie. 

_I miss you._

Just above it, the last text he’d gotten from Armie. From December 10th, when he’d responded _thought you loved that east coast weather_ in response to Timmy’s bitter _it’s fucking snowing_ which he’d sent with a picture from his window, New York covered in a thin layer of white, a blur of snowflakes. 

He pulls the shirt over his head. It hangs almost to his knees, the sleeves hitting his elbows. Standing there in this oversized blue shirt, he is not oblivious to the all too on the nose parallel between himself and his fictional self from that summer. It makes him feel like a cliche, like a child, like he couldn’t handle pretending to be in love without actually falling in love, like he couldn’t just do his fucking job right. 

He crawls into bed, shoves his phone under a pillow, pulls the collar of the shirt up over his nose, curls into a ball, and breathes. He’s reminded of nights spent in Armie’s backyard, half drunk by the fire pit, talking about work and life and music, talking about the stars like they had anything on the miracle of them, together. He’s reminded of the weight of Armie’s arms around him, solid and steady, a particular safety he’d never known before, not just safe from the world, but safe to be entirely himself.

He pulls his phone back out, wakes it up, sees a dozen notifications, but none of them from him. He checks social media for some sign of him, that he still exists out there, sees that he’s liked a bunch of weird art shit on Instagram in the last 20 minutes, tries to live on that for a few moments, just the thought of him being out there somewhere, his thumb hitting the like button. He buries his face deeper into the shirt, drops the phone onto the mattress next to him, groans. 

_I miss you._

He’d been out with his friends, and it was going fine, everyone laughing and fucking around like always. He’d felt his age again. He’d felt almost normal again. He’d flirted with a girl at a dive bar in Alphabet City who had a tattoo of a bird behind her ear. He’d flirted with a boy at a karaoke bar in Koreatown who had blonde hair and sang a truly terrible but confident rendition of “Maybe This Time”. 

But when he and his friends had all spilled onto a train going home, sitting shoulder to shoulder in a nearly empty car, he’d suddenly felt exhausted. He realized how hard he’d been working the whole night, forcing it to feel like it had before. His friends were talking to each other quietly, tired, drunk, and he sat there silent, feeling incredibly distant. So, as he climbed the station stairs back up to the street, he’d sent those three words because they were true. 

Now, he squeezes his eyes shut and begs himself not to start crying even though he can already feel the fabric of the shirt’s collar getting wet. He pulls the cotton between his teeth and bites down, tasting the worn cloth on his tongue, imagining warm skin underneath it. He cries like something is being unearthed from within him, unable to stop or control it. He cries until he’s soaked the collar completely, until he doesn’t have anything left in him. 

_I miss you._

The words echoing into a void. 

He wipes at his face with the overlong sleeve of the t-shirt and picks up his phone. He dials without thinking, without really realizing he’s done it until he hears the phone ringing, until he hears Armie’s voice pick up. 

“Timmy,” he says, smiling. 

“Hi,” he says, feeling stupid and young and shy. 

“Jesus, I was just thinking about you and then you called,” Armie says, sounding so happy it makes Timmy feel the opposite. “What’s up? What’s going on?” 

Timmy doesn’t say anything at first and then he’s saying, “You never responded to my text.” And, god, he sounds petty and childish.

“What text?” Armie asks, then: “Wait. When did you send it?”

“Tuesday.” 

“Shit,” Armie mutters. “I’m sorry, man. Harper dropped my phone in the pool. Had to replace the damn thing.” 

Timmy feels his entire body go slack. “Fuck, are you serious?” 

“Yeah,” and Armie’s laughing. “I guess whatever you sent me before that happened never came through on the new phone.” His voice gets softer. “What did it say?” 

Timmy feels himself shaking. All of the energy he’d been directing towards this thing that turns out wasn’t even a thing leaving him all at once. The last four days spent thinking his world was ending, thinking he’d somehow ruined the one good thing — “Nothing,” he says. He’ll leave it for now. 

And then Armie sighs. “God, it’s good to hear your voice,” he says sounding close despite the thousands of miles. “You know I miss you like crazy, right?” 

Timmy laughs, but he’s crying again, relief literally flooding out of him. “Do you?” 

“Duh,” Armie says. “Don’t you miss me?” 

“Meh,” Timmy responds, doing his best to cover up the sound of his tears with coy nonchalance.

“Wow,” Armie laughs. “Okay.” 

“I’m actually in bed right now wearing a t-shirt I stole from you and fucking crying, so—” 

“So you miss me a small amount, is what you’re saying. Very minimal. You barely notice I’m not there.” 

Timmy wipes a hand over his face uselessly. He wants to keep the joke going, but he finds he’s too tired, too bone marrow deep exhausted, so he just says, “That’s what the text said. That I miss you. And then you didn’t respond and- ”

“Fuck,” Armie breathes. “You thought I didn’t- Timmy, please know that I am always thinking about you. Even when I’m not thinking about you, I’m still thinking about you.” 

Timmy wants to cocoon himself in this stupid t-shirt, just let it swallow him up entirely. “Come visit?” he asks, not caring how desperate he sounds. “It’s so cold and your skin is the fucking warmest thing I’ve ever known.” 

Armie laughs so brightly that Timmy has to close his eyes against it. “Okay,” Armie says. “Okay, yeah. When? I’ll have to check our schedule, but okay.”

“Just a couple of days. I know you have a life and everything.” 

“Timmy,” he says warningly, adoringly. “You’re a part of that life.” 

He wants to question that, but instead he just lets it settle into his heart. “It’s still snowing here,” he says quietly. 

Armie is quiet for a long time, just the in and out of his breathing on the other end of the line. 

“You there?” Timmy asks, grinning but also still a little panicked at the thought of losing him, even just in the dropped call sense. 

“Sorry,” Armie says. “I was picturing you with snow getting all caught up in your ridiculous hair.” 

Timmy flushes. “Yeah?” He breathes out. Then, teasingly, “Come see for yourself.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Pretend You're Missing Me" by Betty Who.
> 
> PS: I was closing out windows getting ready for bed when this WIP popped up and I randomly decided to finish and post it instead of sleeping, so please forgive me if there are typos or if it sucks, you know? Thanks, bye!
> 
> As always, I have [a lovely dumpster](http://elio-bonerman.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, if you're into that sort of thing.


End file.
